Page:The Parson's Handbook - 2nd ed.djvu/18

2 ceremonial, the lawlessness is due to a conservatism which prefers late Hanoverian traditions to the plain words of the Prayer Book,–an unfortunate position, both because those traditions belong to a period of exceptional sloth and worldliness, and also because the date of the Prayer Book makes it impossible for us to read it aright if we try to do so through Hanoverian spectacles. Wesley and the Oxford Methodists, who started the noble Evangelical revival, did not fall into this error ; and, indeed, the very name of 'Methodist' (which meant what Ritualist in its popular sense now means) was given to them because of their care in following the fasts and other observances of the Church.

The lawlessness of those at the other extreme, who are commonly called Ritualists (would that they always deserved the name !), was brought about by the troubles of the days of litigation. Their object at first was the very reverse of lawlessness : they wished only to obey the Prayer Book in all its rubrics. But, unfortunately, the prelates of those days were not conversant with the subject, and were not prepared to obey the Prayer Book. They allowed their clergy to be prosecuted by unconstitutional courts that did not scruple to insert the word not into the Ornaments Rubric; they contented themselves with inveighing against such things as the use of the surplice in the pulpit, an essentially unimportant custom, which had been largely practised in the days of Queen Anne, and has now been eagerly adopted by the Evangelical clergy. Consequently the ritualistic clergy were forced, in the interests of obedience to the Prayer Book, to disobey the Bishops. From that grew up unconsciously a spirit of confirmed lawlessness ; and many of those who began by taking their stand on the Ornaments Rubric, ended by denying it in favour of the customs of a very hostile foreign Church ; till they seemed